Yandex Opens Offices in Europe

MOSCOW, March 12, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Yandex (Nasdaq:YNDX), the Russian search giant, opens a sales office in Lucerne, Switzerland. The new office, headed by Bernard Lukey, formerly CEO of one of Russia's largest online stores, OZON.ru, will serve the company's fast-growing client base in Europe.

Yandex runs search sites along with a whole range of online services in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Turkey. In Russia, Yandex has about 60% share of the country's search market (according to Liveintenet.ru). The company's new sales office in Lucerne was opened to work more efficiently with its advertising clients in Europe by presenting Yandex and its products to customers and training them on how to maximize their advertising opportunities on Yandex.

"International sales have been growing fast over the past few years. We are launching our Lucerne sales office to build a closer relationship with advertising agencies and our clients in Europe," said Alexei Tretiakov, Chief Commercial Officer at Yandex. "We are also keen to intensify our marketing-for-sales activities in Europe to attract new clients. We do believe that by launching this office we'll boost our European sales."

Yandex offers a wide range of contextual and display advertising opportunities to clients interested in online-marketing in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan on its own web-sites, as well as on web sites across Yandex Advertising Network. Advertisers can manage their contextual campaigns via Yandex.Direct, Yandex's proprietary auction-based ad-serving system, available both in Russian and in English. The total daily audience of the ads served via Yandex.Direct exceeds 21 million (according to comScore, as of January 2012).

The Lucerne office is Yandex's second office in Switzerland. Earlier this year, the company opened a development office in Zurich after hiring a group of highly skilled engineers.

About Yandex

Yandex (Nasdaq:YNDX) is the leading internet company in Russia, operating the country's most popular search engine and most visited website. Yandex also operates in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Turkey. Yandex's mission is to answer any question internet users may have.

Yandex.Direct is the first and largest automated, auction-based ad-serving system for contextual advertising on the Russian internet. Ads are displayed for millions of users on search results pages and on the pages of the Yandex Advertising Network.

The Yandex Advertising Network (YAN) includes all third-party websites running ads served through Yandex.Direct. The YAN has thousands of websites showing hundreds of millions ads to viewers every day.

This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. These include statements regarding the development of our international sales efforts and our further expansion plans. Actual results may differ materially from the results predicted or implied by such statements, and our reported results should not be considered as an indication of future performance. The potential risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ from the results predicted or implied by such statements include, among others, competitive pressures, changes in advertising patterns, changes in the legal and regulatory environment, technological developments, and our need to expend capital to accommodate the growth of the business, as well as those risks and uncertainties included under the captions "Risk Factors" and "Operating and Financial Review and Prospects" in our Annual Report on Form 20-F filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on March 2, 2012, which is available on our investor relations website at http://company.yandex.com/investor_relations/sec_filing.xml and on the SEC website at www.sec.gov.

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